Jeremy Corbyn’s latest Labour reshuffle has – rather predictably – prompted a storm of critique about the people the leader appointed, and the means he chose to appoint them. Yet this particular cloud has a potential silver lining: the choice of Keir Starmer as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting...
A friend on Facebook pointed me towards an article in GQ about the Wythenshawe & Sale East byelection. I’m not a regular GQ reader, but the headline – Running On Anger: on the campaign trail with UKIP – and the content of the piece are worth reading. The tactics employed by...
I have not been developing websites for politicians for a while now, preferring instead to do consultancy and training work for a variety of different political and governmental actors. The problem was essentially that you can bring a politician to the social web, but you cannot make them drink, and...
I’m an intensely political person and it has been that way for a long time. I joined the Labour Party in the UK as a 16 year old, before I was even old enough to vote. This means I have spent more than half my life in the Labour Party,...
I was at an event in Brussels this week where there was much discussion about Labour trying to find 5 points it could put on a pledge card during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign. So, looking at what top politicians in the Labour Party have been saying about the...
It has been an interesting week. My posts about Labour’s MEP selections, and the panel member in the East Midlands, Nicki Brooks, who seems to have selected herself, have prompted all sorts of debate, comments, and e-mails sent to me. My blog even already ranks 6th in Google UK if...
So, as reported on LabourList earlier, Labour’s MEP lists are now out, and I am angry and disappointed by the outcome. The full list of names, together with one line bios, website links, and Twitter usernames can be found at the end of this post, and there is a Twitter...
I suppose I should have had my suspicious that all would not be right with the selection process for Labour’s new MEP candidates when the initial information about the process was so thin. So it’s with considerable sadness and annoyance that it now turns out that one of the very...
A tweet by Emma Burnell pointed me towards this blog post by Tracy Hill about UKIP, and the threat they pose to Labour. You can read the whole blog post to look at the stuff about UKIP, but there is one paragraph I will highlight, for it shows the problems...
Two grandees of UK politics were at it again today. Peter Mandelson, while at least acknowledging an in-out referendum for the UK, was nevertheless pompous and deluded in the FT: “pro-Europeans […] should acknowledge that their case has largely been won by default and that it needs to be re-articulated...
At one level all looks fine for Labour and Ed Miliband as the party kicks off conference in Manchester this week. The party is 10 points ahead in the polls, is facing an unpopular and weak government. Roll on 2015. But I am not so sure, and I am not...
A month ago I announced publicly that I no longer had any intention of putting my name forward for the European Parliament election list for Labour. I made the right call, and nothing that has happened since then makes me in any way question my decision. But now, a month...